विभाजन_विभीषिका_स्मृति_दिवस WHEN HUMANITY DIED A THOUSAND DEATHS

 WHEN HUMANITY DIED A THOUSAND DEATHS

During partition, Muslim League members and volunteers turned on the Hindu-Sikh population in West Punjab and the NWFP. Members of these minority communities were exterminated, their women folk raped and abducted

The historical day of August 15, 1947, when the dawn of independence appeared on India’s horizon after a 1000 years of slavery, also became a harbinger of misfortune for the country. That day saw the Partition of the subcontinent. Thirty per cent of its territory went to a nation called Pakistan. Mahatma Gandhi, who used to proclaim, “Pakistan will be made on my dead body”, became a mute spectator. Congress stalwarts, who were in a hurry to enjoy the fruits of freedom, eagerly accepted Partition.

On that day, the Capital of India, Delhi, was dressed like a bride. The atmosphere was of joy, music and dance. It was natural to celebrate the advent of freedom after a millennium of serfdom. That day, while unfurling the Tricolour at Red Fort, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru declared India’s independence. At midnight on August 14, he made his famous ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech with the lowering of the Union Jack and hoisting of the Tricolour.

But, at the same time, on August 15, thousands of Hindu and Sikh homes in Lahore and West Punjab were burning like an inferno. Hundreds of thousands of refugees — men, women, children and the elderly, started trudging towards India with small bundles on their heads. Women were placed in the middle of the desolate bands of refugees, while the elderly were supported by some exhausted men. There were innumerable incidents of robbery, abduction and barbaric killing. Though trains were running, they were so overcrowded that people had to perch on their roofs precariously, along with children. Many such refugees were becoming victims of bloodthirsty Pakistani marksmen crouching nearby.

On August 15, 1947, I was in Lahore and I witnessed the appalling scenes; they haunt me till this day. I was attending the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh training camp at Phagwara, which was to conclude on August 20. About 1,900 senior Sangh workers and office-bearers were engaged in the camp. But in the meantime, heart-rending details of atrocities by Muslim League members and volunteers on the Hindu-Sikh population were pouring in like a deluge from all over West Punjab and the North Western Frontier Province. Members of these minority communities were being exterminated, their belongings looted and their women folk raped and abducted from various vulnerable places.

Sangh leaders decided to wind up the camp on August 10 instead of August 20. We took the first available train to Lahore, in which either there were Sangh volunteers or some Muslims who were escaping from Amritsar and other areas of East Punjab towards West Punjab. After crossing Attari we sensed a change in the atmosphere. At the Jallo, Harbanspura and Mughalpura stations, a Muslim crowd holding portraits of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, had gathered. They were distributing photographs of Jinnah in every compartment. A Sangh volunteer sitting with me tore away the photo given to him and crushed it under his feet. Apart from the four or five Sangh workers in that compartment, all others were Muslims travelling from Amritsar to Pakistan.

To save the situation, I cautioned my colleague not to indulge in such an act. At that time Jinnah was the sole symbol of Muslim communalism, the Partition of India and the massacre of Hindus and Sikhs. At Lahore station, we came to a camp organised by the Punjab Sahayta Samiti of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. We were conversing with some of the workers, who informed us that at another platform a train, which had arrived from Rawalpindi, had been stopped on the way at several places and orgies of looting, killing and other crimes had happened. Once out of the railway station, we left for our homes.

My entire family had left Lahore. Personal correspondence not being permitted in the Sangh camp, I had no means to know where my family had headed. The keys were left with a tenant in the house. Just a few members were left in about a dozen houses; all others had gone. Ultimately, I was able to establish contact with some RSS workers at various offices and a camp at the DAV college and the Hindu Aid committee. On the night of August 10, I could see fires burning all around. The flames looked like they were licking the skies, as the spatial buildings were reduced to ashes. The cries of ‘Allah-o-Akbar!’ were rending the skies. This was countered by slogans of ‘Har Har Mahadev!’ and ‘Sat Sri Akal!’ in the Hindu and Sikh mohallas. But now the strength was fading.

On August 11, members of a Hindu family, whose house was near a Muslim mohalla, were trying to clandestinely escape. They were passing by our house when a Muslim leader followed them and asked them to accompany him to his residence. He told the people gathered there that even Jinnah, the supreme Muslim League leader, had appealed to the Hindus and the Sikhs not to leave their homes, as complete arrangements would be made for their safety in Pakistan. A ray of hope appeared in the hearts of the people of the mohalla and this family returned to their house. But the same night the house was consigned to flames, the belongings looted and the family slain in cold blood. The following day, the remaining Hindu and Sikh residents abandoned their homes. We too left for an office of the Sangh, where a camp had been set up.

On the intervening night of August 12 and 13, I was at a temporary camp at Nisbet Road. During the night, a woman and a few of her relatives came to the camp with a dead body. The woman’s husband had been invited by a Muslim friend to whom he had gone to ask for some money, which he owed him. But instead of returning the money, the Muslim friend murdered him. To proceed to the cremation ground at the banks of the Ravi was full of danger. The workers at the cremation ground had also fled. There was no place to keep the corpse for the night.

The lady and her relatives wanted to cremate her husband at a vacant plot on Nisbet Road. But some people, who had not yet left, gathered at the place and did not allow the cremation, saying a dead body is considered inauspicious. It is not known where the bereaved took the body for the final rites. The people of the mohalla who had feared that their houses would become impure if someone was cremated nearby, did not realise that they would soon have to abandon their homes for good.

A refugee camp had been organised by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh at DAV College in Lahore, which was being run by the Punjab Relief Committee. A tiny hospital was being managed by RSS doctors and nurses connected to the Lahore Medical College. Scores of the wounded were being treated there. Almost all Hindus and Sikhs from Punjab, who were forced to abandon their homes, agricultural lands, shops, factories and belongings, were coming to the DAV College refugee camp, from where they were being taken to trains to be escorted by Dogra and Gorkha soldiers to safety in India.

From the camp at DAV College and the hostel, some Swayamsevak workers in the company of Dogra soldiers were trying to rescue Hindus from various localities. I was asked to work at this place for a few days. Every day, five Swayamsevaks each in two jeeps, were visiting the affected areas under military escort to rescue Hindu and Sikh families trapped there. One day, the group of which I was a member, visited Gawalmandi, Mewamandi, Qulla Gujan Singh and other places. The second group headed for the urban areas of Gurudatt Bhawan, Shahalmi, and Kachhowali. Both groups were being escorted by Dogra soldiers in different jeeps. After the day’s arduous work of rescuing beleaguered people, we returned to the camp in the evening. Those unfortunate persons were allowed to bring only one small suitcase from their well-furnished and opulent houses. But the other jeep with rescue workers did not return, while their escort jeep with Dogra troopers came back. Some workers left again in search of the Swayamsevaks, but they could not be located. At midnight, a young Swayamsevak named Devendar reached DAV College. He appeared harassed and dishevelled. He narrated his dreadful tale of being separated from the Dogra escort jeep and being spotted by Muslim police. The Muslim police took the Swayamsevaks to the banks of a nullah, where they were made to stand in a single file and shot dead. Devender, the only person who escaped that frightful fate, had fallen to the ground before being hit by a bullet. Muslim police, under the impression that all persons were dead, had left the scene following their abominable act, after which Devender rose and reached the college, hiding in the dark.

Thousands of refugees from all over Punjab were coming to DAV College and its hostel daily after having lost their homes, other properties and businesses, in a pitiable condition. Everyone had his/her own tale of woes, hair-raising incidents and atrocities faced by them. It used to be difficult to control one’s tears after listening to their unspeakable, frightful experiences of coming face to face with death. In many cases, entire families were exterminated. Countless women were abducted. Innumerable women folk burnt themselves to death or jumped into wells to save their honour.

Under the Nehru-Liaqat agreement, some platoons of Dogra and Gorkha soldiers were posted at DAV College and its hostel, the Punjab Relief committee office at the bungalow of Dr Gokul Chand Narang, the railway station, the hospitals and some other spots. Under their escort, the Swayamsevaks were going about rescuing Hindus and Sikhs, while risking their own lives with heroic courage.

It was the evening of August 15 or 16, when Jawaharlal Nehru visited the college camp. Thousands of harassed refugees, victims of unprovoked ferocious and barbaric acts of communal vendetta, accosted Nehru. They shouted, “Go back, go back!” Sensing the mood, Nehru and his colleague S Baldev Singh left. In the meantime, the Swayamsevaks tried to calm the enraged refugees, who had been subjected to terror in Punjab and the NWFP. Nehru came back, expressed sorrow at the events affecting the displaced persons and assured them that peace would return soon after his discussions with the Pakistan Government. He also said that Indian Army contingents had been posted in Lahore and other Pakistani towns, and there was to be no more cause of fear or anxiety.

Although the line of demarcation for the partition of the country had not been announced on August 15, the fact that Lahore had been abandoned by Congress Ministers and leaders, was proof enough that the city would go to Pakistan. In spite of Nehru’s assurances, the slaughter and genocide continued. Hindus and Sikhs, who had stayed back, vacated Lahore in a few days time, and sought safety in India.

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